Play, attention, and learning: how do play and timing shape the development of attention and influence classroom learning?

The behavioral and neurobiological connections between play and the development of critical cognitive functions, such as attention, remain largely unknown. We do not yet know how these connections relate to the formation of specific abilities, such as spatial ability, and to learning in formal environments, such as in the classroom. Insights into these issues would be beneficial not only for understanding play, attention, and learning individually, but also for the development of more efficacious systems for learning and for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders. Different operational definitions of play can incorporate or exclude varying types of behavior, emphasize varying developmental time points, and motivate different research questions. Relevant questions to be explored in this area include, How do particular kinds of play relate to the development of particular kinds of abilities later in life? How does play vary across societies and species in the context of evolution? Does play facilitate a shift from reactive to predictive timing, and is its connection to timing unique or particularly significant? This report will outline important research steps that need to be taken in order to address these and other questions about play, human activity, and cognitive functions.

Prioritized maps of space in human frontoparietal cortex.

Priority maps are theorized to be composed of large populations of neurons organized topographically into a map of gaze-centered space whose activity spatially tags salient and behaviorally relevant information. Here, we identified four priority map candidates along human posterior intraparietal sulcus (IPS0-IPS3) and two along the precentral sulcus (PCS) that contained reliable retinotopically organized maps of contralateral visual space. Persistent activity increased from posterior-to-anterior IPS areas and from inferior-to-superior PCS areas during the maintenance of a working memory representation, the maintenance of covert attention, and the maintenance of a saccade plan. Moreover, decoders trained to predict the locations on one task (e.g., working memory) cross-predicted the locations on other tasks (e.g., attention) in superior PCS and IPS2, suggesting that these patterns of maintenance activity may be interchangeable across the tasks. Such properties make these two areas in frontal and parietal cortex viable priority map candidates.

Dissociation of neuronal and psychophysical responses to local and global motion.

Most neurons in cortical area MT (V5) are strongly direction selective, and their activity is closely associated with the perception of visual motion. These neurons have large receptive fields built by combining inputs with smaller receptive fields that respond to local motion. Humans integrate motion over large areas and can perceive what has been referred to as global motion. The large size and direction selectivity of MT receptive fields suggests that MT neurons may represent global motion. We have explored this possibility by measuring responses to a stimulus in which the directions of simultaneously presented local and global motion are independently controlled. Surprisingly, MT responses depended only on the local motion and were unaffected by the global motion. Yet, under similar conditions, human observers perceive global motion and are impaired in discriminating local motion. Although local motion perception might depend on MT signals, global motion perception depends on mechanisms qualitatively different from those in MT. Motion perception therefore does not depend on a single cortical area but reflects the action and interaction of multiple brain systems.

Optimal inference explains the perceptual coherence of visual motion stimuli.

The local spatiotemporal pattern of light on the retina is often consistent with a single translational velocity which may also be interpreted as a superposition of spatial patterns translating with different velocities. Human perception reflects such interpretations, as can be demonstrated using stimuli constructed from a superposition of two drifting gratings. Depending on a variety of parameters, these stimuli may be perceived as a coherently moving plaid pattern or as two transparent gratings moving in different directions. Here, we propose a quantitative model that explains how and why such interpretations are selected. An observer's percept corresponds to the most probable interpretation of noisy measurements of local image motion, based on separate prior beliefs about the speed and singularity of visual motion. This model accounts for human perceptual interpretations across a broad range of angles and speeds. With optimized parameters, its components are consistent with previous results in motion perception.

Time-dependent effects of discrete spatial cues on the planning of directed movements.

The degree of preparation of a motor response varies with the information available regarding the response that will need to be executed and with the time provided to process that information. In experiment 1 we investigated the time-course of processing the information specified by discrete spatial cues regarding the upcoming target of directed movements. For this purpose we varied the number of cues that indicated the possible locations of the target and the duration of the cue period preceding the target. The results showed that the effects of processing the information provided by the cues developed progressively and stabilized after 0.2 s. In addition, the level of motor preparation reached was a function of number of cues. However, the effect of number of cues occurred even in the no cue period condition, i.e. when subjects could not have benefited from the information provided by the cues to prepare the response. Further analyses suggested the hypothesis that, in the no cue period condition, the effect of number of cues resulted from the cues acting as distractors (i.e., interference) whereas, with longer cue periods, the effect resulted from the motor preparatory process (i.e., facilitation). This hypothesis was tested in experiment 2 where the number of cues and the number of distractors were varied inversely. Cues and distractors were the same type of stimuli and differed only in their relation to the time of presentation of the target. Subjects performed in a directed response task and in a control detection task. It was predicted that the facilitatory effect of the cues and the interference effect of the distractors on the planning of the directed response would oppose each other and produce a non-monotonic change of RT across conditions. The results conformed to the prediction and, therefore, supported the hypothesis of independent effects of facilitation and interference. In addition, we found that the pattern of RT across conditions in the detection task differed radically with that in the directed response task. This result indicates that the time-dependent effects of cues and distractors are contingent on the type of motor response required in the task, and, in particular on the spatial requirement on the motor response.

Motor planning: effect of directional uncertainty with continuous spatial cues.

We have investigated the effect of directional uncertainty on the planning of reaching movements. For this purpose, we have used sections of annuli as spatial cues to indicate the directional range within which the target would be presented. The results showed that the reaction time of the reaching response increased with cue range and with the angle between the center of the cue and the target. In addition, the initial direction of movement was biased toward the center of the cue. These results conformed to the predictions of the capacity-sharing model. This model assumes that the processing resources used for motor planning are limited and distributed as a function of the range of directions indicated by the cue, and that when the target appears, these resources are reallocated to represent the response to be executed.

Motor planning: effect of directional uncertainty with discrete spatial cues.

We investigated the effect of spatial uncertainty on motor planning by using the cueing method in a reaching task (experiment 1). Discrete spatial cues indicated the different locations in which the target could be presented. The number of cues as well as their direction changed from trial to trial. We tested the adequacy of two models of motor planning to account for the data. The switching model assumes that only one motor response can be planned at a time, whereas the capacity-sharing model assumes that multiple motor responses can be planned in parallel. Both models predict the same relation between average reaction time (RT) and number of cues, but they differ in their prediction of the shape of the distribution of the reaction time. The results showed that RT increased with the number of cues independently from their spatial dispersion. This relation was well described by the function predicted by both models, whereas it was poorly described by the Hick-Hyman law. In addition, the distribution of RT conformed to the prediction of the capacity-sharing model and not to that of the switching model. We investigated the role that the requirement of a spatially directed motor response might have had on this pattern of results by testing subjects in a simple RT task (experiment 2) with the same cueing presentation as in experiment 1. The results contrasted with those in experiment 1 and showed that RT was dependent on the spatial dispersion of the cues and not on their number. The results of the two experiments suggest that the mode of processing of potential targets is dependent on the spatial constraints of the task. The processing resources can be either divided relative to the spatial distribution of possible targets or across multiple independent discrete representations of these targets.